Free Boy in a Band (A Morgan Mallory story) by Lisa Loomis Page B

Mathew, like here at Bobby’s I wasn’t welcome to hang with them. Sara sat next to me while we ate, as if she was silently trying to be supportive. Some show I hadn’t seen before was playing on TV; no one was talking.
                  “Can I get your plate?” she asked, standing up when we’d finished.
                  “Thanks,” I said, handing her my plate and trash.
                  She disappeared from the family room and I got up and made my way down the hall, in the other direction, to the bathroom. While I washed my hands I stared at my image in the mirror and wondered why I cared about him at all. He’d never led me to believe he felt anything special towards me. I needed to think of him as only a friend and then I wouldn’t be so hurt. As I came back toward the family room, Mathew came inside from a side door. I moved to my right to avoid his path, but he fell in beside me, bumping into me gently.
                  “Having trouble walking?” I asked angrily, not looking at him.
                  “Ahh, bad mood, I’m guessing?” he said.
                  “Not at all,” I replied.
    I stopped and faced him. I searched his face, his eyes. If he felt bad, I didn’t see it, and I flashed him a smile.
    “Nothing to be in a bad mood about ,” I said flippantly and turned to go.
    He got purposely in my way. I crossed my arms in front of me and waited, my anger was back. I didn’t understand his behavior, but maybe I was making too much out of it. He didn’t say anything and I frowned at him.
    “Mathew , get back to Bobby, he’ll be worried about you,” I said sarcastically.
    I pushed him to one side and went around him . He didn’t try to stop me. When I got back to the family room, Sara was back. I sat trying to focus on the TV program and couldn’t. The anger blended into frustration, he definitely confused me. It seemed that when we went to the O’Conner’s, Mathew seemed glad to have me around. We had fun together and were able to talk. When we were in groups, I never knew how he would behave towards me. Sometimes I was included, others I wasn’t. I could understand him not wanting me around all the time, but why make me feel bad.
    Tonight I felt like th e two of them removed themselves from the group and blatantly excluded me. Stupid boys, who cares I tried to tell myself, but it wasn’t working. Mathew considered Bobby one of his best friends. It didn’t seem to matter that they saw each other less than Mathew and I did. I thought about Gayle. It made sense, didn’t it: guys hang with guys, girls with girls? Why would it be different with Mathew? Just because I wanted it to be ? I wanted him to think of me as one of his friends. I realized that as often as I saw Mathew, Bobby won out over me, hands down. They thought they were cool. Unfortunately, we all thought they were too.
     
    “I think you made him up,” Gayle said, referring to Mathew.
                  “Shut up, you know I haven’t.”
                  I envisioned his face and felt my heart jump a little.
                  “How? I’ve yet to meet him. You have no pictures of him. Maybe he’s your imaginary secret friend,” she teased.
                  She was lying in the grass next to me in my backyard as we looked up at the sky and drew pictures in the clouds.
                  “It looks like a tree. See the branches there, and the trunk?” I said, pointing to the big puffy cloud above us.
    “I see a clown with sad eyes .”
                  “Not in the tree?”
                  “No, there. See the face and Bozo-like hair? The sad eyes are there.”
    I watched as my tree turned into a clown when you looked at it a different way. I loved these afternoons. We could spend hours trying to get each other to see what we saw in the clouds. It didn't matter how miserable I